Finding Home ...

There is a coming-home-kinda feeling about a lazy, early North Carolina summer. It’s like your heart is reset in its secret lodge in your chest and it’s back in rhythm. 

There is a strange saying around here that winter lasts for about 4 months, summer lasts for 6, and spring falls on a Tuesday. This feels, quite literally, like the truth! We have very little remembrance of true spring - the blooms are all we know about it. But the heat and most importantly, the humidity, this NC staple, is in a hurry to come back every year. We go from boots to thong flip-flops literally in one weekend.

The first sign of early summer is a blooming Southern magnolia

If you never spent any time in a subtropical climate, it is hard to describe the water in the air. The drips down your chin and under your arms just because you’re alive. You do nothing but sit there, looking at your hydrangeas and you feel a soft bead rolling down your temple. It’s only 10 AM and you can feel the hot air creeping in like a thief ... 

Kitties are lazier than usual, if such a thing is even possible, moving ever so slowly, for fear they’ll waste their energy in a hurry if they jerk around too much. Their eyes are blinking on a delay ... 

One of the must-haves in a Southern home is a screened-in porch, preferably in the back of the house, where no human traffic can bother you or disrupt your God-given peace. Lots of people dream of a house with a nice, deep front porch, but I like that just for the architecture. I would not think of ever using it to sit and take in the world. My world is that of the back yard, facing the woods, and allowing me no human pollution whatsoever - just birds, deer, bunnies, and squirrels. Maybe the occasional snake - because what is NC without its snakes?! 

On a day like today, I sit and melt away in the warm, wet air, and think about life, about what’s important, about where to next. If I learned anything in 50 years, it’s that humans will disappoint and fail, but through failure they will learn, rise again, and move on. I cannot measure my days in human victories or defeats. My beat nowadays is more that of nature, with its untainted beauty, permanence, resilience and steadiness ... Nature and that which is not human is what I seek for thy disappoint the least. 

If the most consequential trip of my life, my South African safari, taught me anything, it was that to find happiness is to be the most you you can ever muster. An impala never wants to be a lion, and a lion never wants to be a leopard. They are authentically who they are and they are the best at who they are because they wish nothing against their nature or against their natural grain. 

Human intelligence is our ticket to progress and to our demise ... Nowadays, I limit myself to what I know is true and permanent - gorgeous, massive hardwoods mixed in with Southern pines, whispering in the faint wind in my forest, finches, cardinals and sparrows having some sort of a quarrel over the shortage of bird seed, blue birds moving on after their first batch of babies have flown the coop, butterfly bushes in full-bloom waiting, patiently, for their residents to move in. 

About 4 years ago this landscape lady promised a scrawny butterfly bush she planted on a rocky hill behind my house will one day take over my yard. Every year since, I doubted her. I think it's finally time.

These are true, honest, solid things. There is no pretense, no lying, and no A.I. Just the pure, verifiable (but not needed to be) source of what is true ... I live for this. I cherish this. It's restoring ...  

Some days, it's hard to pick a favorite ...

I started this blog 20 years ago next month. I started it to document my travels, and I have been blessed with so many. I have lived a truly charmed life, with many opportunities to learn and open my eyes and my heart to a world I never knew would be possible for me ... 

But the one thing I have learned the most is that sometimes the most memorable journeys are not very far from just where you are. Not very far from your home or even from this chair, right here, where I type these words ... Not very far from the lazy kitten sprawled on the chair next to me ... It’s how you look at the world that makes the adventure and not always how many miles you travel ... 

For now, for today ... The world is warm, familiar, and soft, like an embrace of someone kind and trusting. The air is lingering, sticky and wet. The birds are getting lazier and lazier, judging by their fainting songs, as we approach mid-day. The sun is almost on top of me, I feel it and it makes my eyes squint a little, even under the roof of my screened-in porch. The fluorescent blue wasps are buzzing around and the branches are slowly nodding in the light wind. 

The skies are just waiting for some kind of signal to drop buckets on our heads yet again, despite the desperate attempts of the sun to peek through and shoo them away. 

It’s a quiet day in the country. The neighbor’s dog, suffering from some terrible separation anxiety, is the only chatterbox out there - disrupting the peace and the birds’ subdued symphony. He gets tired after a while and you hear him wail and yawn ... 

It’s another day in The South and, I am fairly sure that even if it’ll bring about change and even eternal pause to so many around the world, it will also bring a new day for those left behind. As life and physics will have it, the world still moves on. And I choose to move with it, when humanity allows, always waiting for the next chapter ... 

A Gorgeous, Restless Summer

I cannot believe it's September and my mums have bloomed already. Some blooms are actually already dried out. 

Where has the summer gone?! I don't know whether it's because we are getting visibly older and they say time just slips from under you when that happens, or what ... but this whole year's been nothing but a dream ... Here and gone before you knew what's what ... 

This summer's been busy beyond words with all its summery events and long, languid days of dolce far niente - if that can be ever busy ... 

We visited the cool mountains, hiked alongside fast springs and calm, deep, cold lakes; we drove on steep, twisty green roads, framed by roadside waterfalls and rhododendron-covered cliffs; we sipped sweet (or dry, but mostly sweet) Southern wine right from the wineries; we made some smoke in the back yard cooking meats, or in the woods while camping; we scouted numerous farmers' markets in search for just the perfect fruit and tomatoes. 

We listened to live music in the toasty evenings, and marveled at the gorgeous sunsets at the end of hot days. Have you noticed how sunsets are more colorful because the days themselves are literally burning in the summer?!  We chased butterflies and breathtaking rainbows after hot summer showers... 

We are lucky to be here, to be mobile, to be healthy, to have the energy and mind and willingness to explore and learn another thing about our town, our state, ourselves, to have each other and to live another day to tell the tale ... And all this with almost no vacation days. Just weekends and national holidays. Time is always here for us to fill up, and for that, I am so grateful! 

Here's to a long and hopefully gentle fall, and to more summers to come ... 

Some of the sights of this summer: 

Sunset on Smith Mountain Lake, VA

Camp fire on Smith Mountain Lake, VA

Chasing dragon flies in Natahala National Forest, in Highlands, NC

Sitting by Mill Creek in Highlands, NC

The dam and rhododendron at Cliffside Lake in Natahala National Forest, NC

Grilling in the back yard

Listening to Booker T at the NC folk festival in Greensboro, NC

Chasing birds at Duke Gardens, in Durham, NC

Chasing butterflies ... everywhere ... 

Relaxing on the patio of our neighborhood bar after a hot day

Chasing rainbows on Haw River - Pittsboro, NC

Sunset in Hickory, NC 

The view atop Grandfather Mountain, in NC

Out of all the wineries we visited this summer, this was our favorite: Grandfather Vineyards outside Blowing Rock, NC

Returning to Old Places and Discovering Something New. Always.

I am writing this as I am sitting in my hotel bed somewhere in The Rockies after climbing up the elevator while listening to the hotel radio playing “Linger” by The Cranberries. I remember where I was the first time I listened to this song and fell in love with the Irish band: I was in Romania and the year was probably around 1990 something ... How long I have come! How far I have traveled! ... This life truly is a trip!

This is my umpteenth hotel in the past two months which have had me traveling from the Atlantic to The Rockies, to the Atlantic and back to The Rockies again ... How I could manage to do so much travel while dodging two hurricanes still boggles my mind, but that is a topic for another blog...

For this one, I just wanted to stop and remember the fun times we have had, the new places I found and the old ones I have rediscovered during these past few months.

We started this marathon with a return trip to Asheville. We had not been there together for 11 years. Just saying that sounds wrong, but it is true. 

Asheville seems both stuck in a timeless warp and anew and fresh with new blood at the same time. The streets are filled with hippies, Krishnas, dirt, music, joy, laden with history and memories; a bon vivant-ness flows in the olden streets at dusk on a Saturday; the breweries abound and lure the traveler in with summer brews waiting to be savored, the mountains are a stone-throw away, ready to be explored. At the end of August, Asheville was still very hot. The city seemed a lot more crowded and a lot more happening than I remembered it ... That was the new part.


The Biltmore was gorgeous, in its everlasting beauty. The only thing that rivaled its beauty and richness this time around was an exhibit of Chihuly’s works of art - stunning beauty creations of massive amounts of glass and steel. The glassworks paired with the natural beauty of the gardens and the mountains, juxtaposed with the carefully detailed architecture of The Castle gave us a wonderful escape from our daily grind into a world all its own - grandiose, rich, timeless.

Chihuly at Biltmore was one of those things you'll remember as long as you'll live. It was not on my bucket list, but it so should have been. If you ever have the opportunity to see this artist's work, don't hesitate! How something so fragile can withstand so much nature and abuse is amazing to me. A great reminder of every one of us: we're so brittle but we all weather storms.

We had brunch at The Grove Park Inn, and that was hands down the most varied and plentiful brunch I have ever had anywhere. I thought for years that the brunches in Sundance or Snowbird, Utah were well done, but The GPI has them beat.  Till proven otherwise - the best. I usually go for the smoked salmon at these feasts, but I had not one but three choices of smoked fish with this one: salmon, trout, and mackerel, alongside any other seafood you can imagine, from shrimp, to oysters and lobster ... This just to name one kind of the many kinds of dishes they offer.

The majestic stonework at The Grove Park Inn

It’s amazing that we did so much in Asheville just in a one-night weekend. I am so glad we are back in these parts where we could escape to so many places within driving distance from us, on impulse and be able to see and do so much!


In September, we went to our first Triangle Heart Walk, which benefits the American Heart Association and gives the money to the research in our communities. I have participated in it before in other communities, and this has been a cause which I have supported, for obvious reasons (if you know me) for years. All I can say about this event is that it ... was ... hot. Not just hot, but exhaustingly hot ... We were wimps and walked 1 mile instead of the 3 because it was brutal! As a heart patient, it was a great meet: I always like to hear the stories of other people “like” me - we’re really all unique and every heart condition is different. This was my first time meeting a heart transplant patient and being every bit as amazed, in awe, and overwhelmed as I always thought I would be when faced with such an individual. He was an inspiration. There is something special about people who get to die a little and then come back, there is no doubt about this. None.


Also in September I got to jump on a plane and come to Park City, UT for a conference. It has always been melancholy to travel back to the place I called home: my first married, happy home, for seven years. A place where I had always dreamed I would live. It’s a bitter-sweet feeling to go back: I miss these parts but I know, in my heart, that I don’t belong here anymore. Park City was cool and bright gold from the changing aspen; a perfect backdrop for the start of the fall.

Aspen mountains on the lake in Park City, Utah

Back on the East Coast it was time to take my sweet, amazing nephews to the SC beach - one of them for the first time in his little 7 year-long life! Call me crazy, but for a childless person, I have always enjoyed traveling with kids. It is amazing to see how they step out of their comfort zone and explore a world they didn’t know that existed. We started by barely being able to pull them out of the house, and pry them away from their devices with more or less force, and we ended with not being able to round them back up and bring them back in the room when they discovered how much fun jumping over the waves or floating in the lazy river, or sinking in the pool is. For two kids raised in the frozen tundra of Canada the beach was “pure paradise.” They said as much. To see the sparkles in their eyes with every new “different” restaurant experience or shopping adventure is rejuvenating. Reminds us, old, and cynical people, that the world should never cease to wonder us, as long as we stay open and come out to meet it.

First time together jumping the ocean waves - a breathless moment in time. So grateful to have been able to give them this and share this with them.

In Park City, I wore sweaters and scarves. In Myrtle Beach, SC, I wore a bathing suit and thought I was literally melting, decomposing, surely dying from sun exposure ...


Again, Myrtle Beach is one of those trips back in time for me, but I always make a point of finding something new to explore even in my old timey places. This time was the Pier 14 Restaurant which is literally on the Ocean (on stilts, part of a pier) and which did not exist 20 years ago when I lived there. The grouper filet and the mashed potatoes were to die for! I can say I got my seafood fix during this trip, for sure, and as any respectable coast town theirs doesn’t disappoint.

Blaga (look him up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Blaga) says that "eternity was born in a village." I say that we see eternity with our own naked eye in every sunset we watch.

There is something of that when the sun is being born from the immensity of the sky and it's reflecting its birth into the immensity of the ocean ... Time just stands still forever ...

And after all that adventure, I am back in The Rockies for more work and maybe some play, too ... As exhausting as these past two months have been, and as much as I still miss home, I am very fortunate, lucky and blessed beyond belief to be able to do this much. Not just financially, not just through the grace of my employer, but also through the grace of God and the knowledge of all my doctors who keep me going at this speed in my advancing age (aren’t all our ages advancing?!), with my advanced health problems.


I am also grateful that the world we live in is, still, allowing to some extent for us to mov about freely and explore it deeply. This is no small gift especially nowadays! 

I will continue to push on, open more doors, discover more of what this life has to give me. One page at a time.

“ ... if you could return, don't let it burn, don't let it fade...” (The Cranberries, Linger)

The Inspiration Trail

I just read somewhere this week that the new midlife crisis is taking up art, or artistic endeavors. That as the world is getting crazier around us, we are looking more and more for focus, being present, and creating art provides a good refuge for this pursuit.

Well, call it midlife crisis, or call it whatever, I crave inspiration lately. I crave good books, or just good words, good sounds, and pretty food, ordinary pictures that show the extraordinary naked and raw …

We took this little hike starting on a hidden bridge close to our house this weekend and the bridge was a surprisingly inspirational shrine …

The quiet of the hot summer day melted in the bold noise of the cicadas, and the muted trickle of the river below.

Take a look!

Check out this heart-shaped-leaved natural trellis. This is how the journey on the bridge opened.

The road ahead ... 

Natural "bridge" of tree branches over the river. 

The Haw River, in NC

Boy, this stretch of the bridge said so much, and so loudly ... 

More foods for thoughts ... 

Rushing waterfalls, as fast as my jumbled thoughts ... 

I am always shocked at how life finds a place to be: this grass was springing from the asphalt of the bridge. 

Summer and fall battling it out ... 

The creatures ... Click the last picture to view the whole album. 

A Picture a Day. June 2018

The world continues to be crazy around us. Pain, and heartache. Pain for the sake of pain. Malice. Wickedness. Un-humanity ... Every day. Sadness and desperation. The awareness that evil is happening is too raw, too vivid, too real. And yet lots of us, me included, seem to be silent spectators, watching in disbelief. I wish we did more. I wish I did more. I wish I'd save at least one soul ... 

While all this is happening, time does not stand still. Summer has come and it's undoubtedly here, in all its glory. Simmering days and cool nights in the mountains (if you're lucky enough to get there, like I was). Hot dogs on the fire and evenings on the patio, with Gypsy perking his ears up for crickets and frogs. Roses bursting with color and smothered by bugs ... 

In this whirlwind of a world, I, once again, bury my head, of sorts, in the beauty around me, hoping and being grateful that at least there is some beauty still to be had. Still to be watched. Still to be shared. As I share with you now, my photo journey during the past month. 

Ever since I can remember, one of the things that says "summer" to me are mushrooms. Click this picture to see the whole album for June. Enjoy the ride! 

Back to Nature

We've replaced the dry, Rocky Mountains air of the desert with the watery, hot, buggy and muggy air of The South. The kind of air you see in a photo, like a light white film between all the other elements. It's material ...

We've replaced the snowy rocky peaks with miles and miles of lakes, hiding underneath green lush brush, behind tall, straight-up, squeaky pines …

We've replaced the multi-color carpet of summer flowers on mountain pastures with tons and tons of mushrooms from so much rain and humidity …

We've replaced the harsh, hot red rocks with soft, wet, green moss …

We've traded the million star-studded sky, a glorious carpet in the dark night of the desert, for the hundreds of earthly sparks of the lightning bugs over the thick, green, forest floor … Traded wishing upon a falling star for wishing upon a firefly …

We've traded scarceness of the swirly and crooked junipers, the fragrant and harsh to the touch sage, the cactus for the abundance of pine trees, stocky and bulky oaks, for sub-tropical fig tree-like thickets, and so many more species of plants, bushes, and trees than I care to remember …

We've replaced the dry and hard hidden desert trails winding up and down mountain cliffs with clearly pathwayed pine needle-covered trails winding around lakes …

We've replaced the trout in the rare stream with turtles in every lake that we walked by …

We've replaced the cool night breeze and cross-winds in our camper, from both windows being left open at night, with the noisy air conditioning unit. Windows tightly shut this time – no escape from humidity otherwise, not even at night …

We've traded the desert dust in and on our shoes with itchy bug bites and burning welts …

But the beans tasted just as sweet and the sleep was just as deep as ever. Just like with every camping trip before, our batteries are recharged, and we're turning back to our routines with the same amount of peace and gratefulness and awareness that life could be simpler and yet so rich.

We're camping in NC. It's definitely not anything like camping in The Rockies. But that's just it: it's just a different experience, and by no means a lesser one. This is what here is now, and we're taking it in wholly: the breathing of the land, the vibrations of everything that's alive and ready for a new year in the wilderness, the closeness to quiet, and God is still the same, in whatever dialect, and whatever the latitude.

If you want to know what's important, what is really, truly important in this world, go and speak to a tree, or a hill, or a star, or a star-like bug. Or better yet: speak not at all, but listen. Get lost and lose judgment. Just take everything in. Let nature in and allow her to awaken your senses. There is so much to learn! I can promise you it will not always be comfortable, but it always be worth it.

Click the picture for the whole album of the latest camping trip, exploring Holly Point Campground and Durant Nature Preserve in NC

Summerfilled

“Be silent and revolve with no will.” (Rumi)

… driving along the Spanish Fork river, looking for a spot … winding down among the tall red rocks and juniper trees that jump towards the skies at every corner in a desperate feat to be seen … thinking road is too narrow for two cars, and we have a camper … driving by small pastures, not big enough for our outfit … keep on driving … finally the perfect spot appears, on the left, a wide meadow, at the foot of the mountain, with the river at its root, snaking around it ... the prairie grass swaying in the lazy breeze … sunlight draping over everything like a silky, breezy curtain – it looks like a painting, completely unmoved … 

 

… we were to fill the afternoon and another day with lazy … get a cold drink, loaded with lime … get another cold drink, full of bubbles … and yet another one, just water, to cool off … eat lunch – cold, ripe tomatoes, in a salad … eat a snack … and another one later … walk around camp, shoot the mountains … open a magazine with a yawn … and another one … read the weird, 800 pages book, what else is there to do in a lounge chair when the sun is baking your skull through the awning above?! what else are summers for other than losing them in endless pages?! … look at the time... only half past one … the sun at its peakest … the heat, liquid in the buggy, dry air …

… a tickle is barely felt … right there... above the ankle... a bite and a twitch … must be ants … again … it will leave a mark ...

… for a brief second, looking up from the book … the air is littered with dragon flies, butterflies and no-nos … chasing each other, with so much energy, losing (perhaps not losing, but giving up) track of where they're coming from and where to they're going … the trees above, on the steep slopes are hinting of fall … shhh … don't say the 'f' word too loud, not even too loud in your thoughts... it's August still … we shall persist …

… another snack tastes like garlic … and yet another one like chocolate … just eating our minutes away … looked at the watch again … only 10 minutes have passed – feels like eternity …

… unnamed and unseen birds are squealing … maybe they're happy … maybe a snake ate their babies … or maybe it's just summerlust … shrieks and wings flutters above the water … ahhh, the water – the stream trickling like a broken faucet, over the rocks … crystal clear, inviting like a perfect host, the sky and forest to get lost into its reflection … beside the timeless water and the birds, there is an eternal buzz in the air, maybe the deaf sound of the time passing, but could very well be a cicada or a snake … it's splendor in the tall grasses ... we're swallowed ... 

… the silky peace of the summer afternoon is ripped to shreds by gun shots … and then again … I startle … we're in the West, all right: rocky cliffs, prairie grass and gun shots … if Buffalo Bill would wake up from his eternal slumber, he would feel right at home … shovel nearby, to round up the décor … 

... there is no smell ... the air so dry, it could break with a crunch - you can feel it in your dry nostrils ... but no smell ... no pines around ... only sage and juniper, crispy from heat ... prairie grass is odorless ... just dust ... not more ...  

… eventually, the sun gets lazy, too, and slips itself, slowly, at first and then gaining more speed behind the mountain … dusk feels like someone left the fridge door open and a surreal coolness blasts at our warm, sun-tired faces, and the shade takes over the earth with a newly found loud shriek of 'a-aaahhh'... we get hungry ... yes, again … we make fire and cook like cowboys – beans, sausages, corn …finally, we smell like wood and bacon ... 

… the next day, a morning hike to loosen our joints … take in the morning heat fighting with the dew … a baby rattler crosses our path, just in case there was any doubt that we're in The Rockies, anymore …

… we leave empty … empty of stress and empty of whatever humanity tried to put in us the weeks before … it all stays at the campsite ... we just dumped, we poured all our city stuff out there, with the rattlers, the dragon flies, and washed it off in the river … it will go down with the water, purifying us, into the world, and beyond that, into the oceans … it all recirculates … we head home empty of 'stuff' and ready to feel anew and crisp again … whatever life will have in store for us now, we're ready …

 

Our camping spot - beneath the mountain, along the river ... 

 

A hint of fall ...

 

The wild life 

 

Can you hear anything at all, besides the water drops and the sun melting the leaves?! 

 

Lazy fire in the evening